


SoMa Week 2015

by fabulousanima



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Character Death, Conventions, F/M, Graduation, Skinny Dipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 05:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3965347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabulousanima/pseuds/fabulousanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A compilation of the prompts for SoMa Week 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	SoMa Week 2015

**Day 1: Geeking Out**

The noise, the sights – it was almost overwhelming to Soul as he wandered through the high-ceilinged halls of the Hynes Convention Center.  There were people running everywhere, shouting to their friends.  Cosplayers posed for pictures every few feet.  Soul tried to take everything in at once and found himself turning his head this way and that, like someone watching an intense tennis match.

He held a program of events tightly in his hands, the edges ragged from how much he had played with them.  Maybe he shouldn’t have chosen a convention as large as Anime Boston as his first one to attend, but he was here, and he wanted to make the most of it.  He hadn’t had the guts to dress up – he was wearing his usual leather bomber jacket and jeans – but he knew exactly who he would have been if he had been brave enough.

Agent Fox Mulder, of The X-Files fame, was his all time favorite character.  Soul had gone so far as to make a replica of the FBI badge for the cosplay before chickening out.

Looking around at all the attendees, he felt better; he was by no means the only one without a costume.  There were plenty of people in civilian clothes, or wearing a pair of fuzzy ears, or something vaguely steampunk.  Still, he kind of wished he had worn something.  It would be the fastest way to identify other fans.

He wandered into the large expansive all that served as the Dealer’s Room.  Table after table laden with merchandise stretched before him.  He felt his wallet sit heavily in his pocket as he wandered the thin alleyways between each booth.  His room at his parents’ house was designed they way they liked it: austere, elegant, classic.  There wasn’t a lot of room for colorful posters of doe-eyed girls, or large plush figures, or delicate figurines.  He wanted to get something, but he knew he had to find something he could tuck away before the housekeeper threw it out.

Eventually Soul meandered off, searching through the large hallways for the right conference room to attend the handful of panels he’d circled on his program.  He sat through one (it was not well attended, and he was pretty disappointed), and then another (far more lively and well run).  In the third, a young guy with blue hair hard argued with the moderators for twenty minutes about the precise interpretation of Fullmetal Alchemist and the nature of god in it (Soul was pretty sure that it was his real hair – it was hard to tell in a sea of wigs) until he and his companions were asked to leave.  It was as that group was exiting the panel that Soul caught a glimpse of a very particular shade of red that made his stomach do a backflip.

It had to be a Dana Scully; there was no one else who could have that precise shade of hair.  Watching the retreating back of a like-minded soul made his heart clench, and he shot out of his chair.  Running along the aisles bent at the waist, Soul tried to keep an eye on the person as the group left the hall.  They disappeared out the door as he stumbled over someone’s knees, and he cursed silently as he straightened.  He wormed his way past the protesting con-goers, whispering apology after apology under his breath.

Bursting into the hallway, he looked around.  They were nowhere to be found; they must have ducked into another room.  But as he poked his head into each, Soul grew more and more dismayed.  He couldn’t find the Scully cosplayer.

Reluctantly, Soul left the convention to slip into the food court at the Prudential Center.  He waited in the long line at the grilled cheese booth, listlessly picking at his program again.  His eyes kept scanning the winding lines of garishly clothed con attendees, sprinkled with the occasional mortified civilian, but he didn’t see that precise shade of red anywhere.  After he finally got his meal and sat down at a plastic bar stool, Soul flipped through his program again.

If he could find a panel on The X-Files, it might be his best bet of running into that cosplayer again.  Unless – she had been with a large group.  Maybe she wouldn’t be able to slip away from them?  Or they would go somewhere else, majority rules?  Maybe she thought she knew everything there was to know about the show, and wouldn’t bother going?

Either way, it was a moot point; there was no panel on The X-Files at the convention.  He chewed his grilled cheese morosely.

After lunch, Soul made his way back into the Dealer’s Room, feeling a bit dejected.  There was no way of knowing if this person would attend all three days of the convention, or if she’d cosplay the same character twice.  He might have missed his chance at meeting something else who was as obsessed with The X-Files as he was, and he found himself sulking because of it.

There was a booth with a young girl sitting at it, looking eagerly around at all the con-goers.  Her table was laden with sketchbooks and pencils and markers, and hung neatly around the top of the display were artistic renderings of different characters.  The art was pretty good, but it was her wide-eyed expression that drew Soul over to her table.

“Hi there!” she chirped at Soul.  He smiled.  “My name is Tsugumi.  Would you like to see some of my stuff?”  She waved her arms in a sweeping gesture to indicate all the pictures.  “Take a look around, see if there’s anything you like!  If you don’t see something, you can also commission me for it and I’ll work on it over the next day, and you can pick it up on Sunday!”

“Sounds good,” said Soul with a nod, eyes roving over the fanart in front of him.  He didn’t recognize all of the characters, but they all looked pretty good; certainly, they looked like actual people.  Drumming his fingers on the table, he debated whether he should ask for a drawing of Mulder and Scully.  Perhaps he could walk around the convention with that, and hope his mystery cosplayer spotted him?

“Wow, these are really good!” came a voice from his left.  “You’re really talented!”

Soul turned, then did a double take.  The Scully cosplayer was standing right next to him!

“Thanks!” said Tsugumi.  “Would you like anything?”

“Hi,” blurted out Soul.  He was staring at her, he knew it, but he couldn’t help it.  He could feel the heat spread across his cheeks.

She turned to him.  From this close up, he could see wisps of ashy blonde hair poking out from around the edge of the wig.  She was short and dressed in a sensible Scully suit, with a bare hint of lipstick as she smiled.  “Hi there,” she said. “Did you want a picture or–?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” Soul fumbled.  “But, wait.  What I really wanna ask is if I can have your number?”

She looked taken aback.  Soul hurried to correct his mistake.

“Sorry, wait.  I know we don’t know each other.  I just meant– I was gonna come as Agent Mulder.  I love The X-Files.  I wanted to know if you wanted to meet for lunch tomorrow in the food court and maybe… discuss it?”  He hated that he ended on a question, but he held her gaze, desperation evident in his eyes.

She blinked owlishly, then grinned.  “Wow, yes!  None of the friends I came here with are into it, this is great!  The food court sounds like an excellent place to meet.”  She held out her hand, and he took it.  “I’m Agent Dana Scully, but you can call me Maka.

He smirked, feeling more and more at ease.  “Soul.”

“That’s kinda funny,” she said.  “If you had cosplayed Mulder, we would have swapped letters!”  When he looked nonplussed, she continued.  “You know, in our names?”

“That’s… a weird thing to notice.”

She giggled.  “I guess.  But yes, I’d love to discuss The X-Files tomorrow over lunch.  But I don’t have a pen or paper, and I left my phone upstairs.”

“Uh–”  Soul glanced around, and his eyes landed on one of pieces of paper lying on the table.

But as he reached for it, Tsugumi’s hand slammed down onto the fanart.  “That’ll be twenty bucks,” she said sweetly, though her eyes were laser focused.  “And yes, you can borrow my pen.”

“Nice choice,” said Maka, nodding at the paper.  He glanced down.  Apparently he had selected a close up, detailed picture of Benedict Cumberbatch’s pouty face.

“Whatever,” he said, wiggling his fingers to ask Tsugumi for the pen.  “Here, write your number–”

In the end, it was the best souvenir he could have gotten from the convention.

 

* * *

**Day 2: Cuddles  
**

On their first date, Maka and Soul went to the carnival.  They spent the day together eating fried dough and riding on the rollercoasters and at the end of their trip, Soul decided he wanted to try to win Maka something.  He approached a ball toss game, threw down a five dollar bill, and walked away with a stuffed bear named Mr. Cuddles.  He happily handed it over to Maka, a pink tinge on his cheeks.

It was the ugliest thing she had ever seen.

It was lumpy and misshapen, with a too-large head and a too-small body.  It was a garish shade of not quite purple, and its eyes were bulging and blue.  A tiny red felt tongue stuck out of the side of its short, piggish snout, mocking her, teasing her.

When they snuggled on her bed together, it sat on the pillows, staring at them.  Maka felt its creepy gaze on her back as they watched a movie on her Shibusen-issued laptop, making the hairs on the nape of her neck stand up.

Every time she would return from school, she’d open her door and jump at the hideous visage that was Mr. Cuddles.  Somehow the teddy bear managed to take her by surprise every single time.  Maka glared at it as she crossed the room, torn between her feelings of revulsion for the bear and happiness for what it symbolized: namely, that she and Soul were finally dating.

She slept uneasily under its unwavering stare.  She started changing her clothes in the bathroom.  She swore at times it must have moved by itself because _she did not remember putting it there_.

One stormy night, the lightning flashed across the sky and the thunder rattled the window panes, and Maka spent a sleepless night staring at the unseeing eyes of Mr. Cuddles, sure that he must also have some sort of Soul Perception; those eyes knew too much.  She stared at him until she could no longer keep her eyes open.

The next morning, she woke to sunshine and birdsong.  Mr. Cuddles was no longer situated on the other end of her bed, like she had left him, but was instead wrapped in her arms.

Maka shot out of bed with a screech.  She paced the floor, staring at the offending animal.  She couldn’t take it anymore.

With a roar, she grabbed the animal and squeezed it.  The head popped off in an explosion of stuffing pellets just as Soul came through the door, arm transformed and eyes darting around the room for danger.  He watched as the head of Mr. Cuddles fell to the floor with a light _thump_ , then turned to look at Maka.

After a beat, Maka sighed and straightened.  “Soul, I love you, but that bear was awful.  I’m glad we had a good time on that date, but I cannot live with Mr. Cuddles anymore.”

He stared.

“I’m sorry?” she tried, starting to feel worry creep into her heart.

“You love me?”

With a slight sinking feeling, Maka realized that it was the first time she had ever said those words to him.

Well.  Better lean into it.

“Yes,” she said, striding across the room and standing in front of her weapon.  Maka wrapped her arms around his neck; he tried to do the same, but struggled to transform his arm back, fumbling.  “And I would love to go on another date so we can make a new memory with a new souvenir, but as a general rule: no more creepy bears.”

“No more creepy bears,” said Soul, and they sealed the weirdest promise of their partnership with a kiss.

 

* * *

**Day 3: Catharsis  
**

It takes her a while to notice, because for the first few weeks, everyone speaks to her in a whisper.

They stand in the lowly lit room and reach for her hands, taking them into their large cold ones.  They whisper at her, murmuring platitudes like the wingbeats of a moth on the still night air, a low hum of condolences.  Soft laments fall on her numb ears, and she understands none of the words; she can only understand the snatches of conversation people mutter when they think she cannot hear.

“– _killed while resonating, I can’t imagine-_ -”

“– _can’t believe Eater is_ –”

“– _do you see the way her eyes_ –”

“– _what do you think_ –”

“- _-something very-_ -”

She wants to claw at her ears, but her arms are like lead.

But their whispers are nothing compared to the deathly silence of their apartment, an echoing tomb, a mausoleum of memories.  They flit in and out at first, plunking casserole after casserole on her counters, washing windows and dishes and mirrors and floors, but eventually the river runs dry, and she is left in the empty creek bed of their hospitality.

At first Maka only notices it out of the corner of her eye: a quick movement, a bright flash of light.  She jerks her head to follow it only to be frustrated by the lack of anything there.

The whispers come at night, and she thinks they are a dream, begs for them to be a dream, until they are so loud that she clutches the pillow against her ears.  Finally, she flips on the light, and the murmurs skitter into the corners like shadows retreating from the sun.  She falls asleep with the light on and her head buried under the pillow.

-

There is an extra bedroom in her apartment now.

She doesn’t know what to do with it.  She walks to the entrance of the doorway, then retreats back, over and over again.  But it is like a vortex, and it keeps pulling her back, and she finally enters, at once hit with the musty smell of an unvacuumed room.  Running a hand along the sleeves of the coats hanging in the closet, she feels a knot in her chest; tears threaten to fall.

The murmuring grows louder, an insistent hum like an old lightbulb, and she pinches the bridge of her nose.  The swaying of the sleeves looks like dozens of arms reaching for her, all clad in too-familiar clothes–

She can smell his body wash–

She dashes out the door and slams it behind her.

-

She takes up running.

The obstacle courses where they did their training are not designed for a weaponless meister, and the farther away she gets from the city, the quieter the voices become.  Her feet pound the pavement of the lonely highway, its shoulder too small to truly allow for cars to pass her safely; she doesn’t care.  The roads are rarely used anyway.

Maka runs without music, listening only the sound of her blood pounding in her ears.  It thumps within her in a steady heartbeat, the rhythm that kept her alive.  She hears it, over and over and over, her feet slamming against the unforgiving concrete.  It’s one heart, beating alone; it’s the only heartbeat she hears.

Skidding to a stop, Maka throws her head back on her shoulders, breathing raggedly.  The sky is darkening quickly overhead, the navy blues and deep purples of the rapidly setting sun.

A motorcycle rumbles in the distance, speeding along on the highway ahead of her.

She falls to her knees.

-

He’s rotting.

His food, that is.  He had some leftovers in the fridge: weeks old General Tso’s chicken, some stir fry he’d made one night, a few thin pork chops in a now questionable sauce.  The muttering flies around her ears like bats fluttering through the night sky as she reaches for the nearly-liquified bananas he had bought.  Wanted to eat healthier.  Lot of good it did.

If she goes cross-eyed, she can almost see him walk through the kitchen, clad in only his jeans riding low on his hips, and open the fridge in search of a late night snack.  It’s all too real; she slams her eyes shut and counts to ten.  The whispers make her lose track.

With a grunt, she sweeps the disgusting bananas into the trash.  She drags the bin over to the fridge and tosses every bit of food he had saved, tupperware and all.  From under the sink, she grabs the Clorox and scrubs the counter clean of banana juice.

The voices come in and out of focus, like someone tuning a radio.

-

She finds herself in Stein’s office.

Pacing along his glossy floor, she turns her head this way and that, trying to catch a glimpse of the things she sees when she’s not looking.  She wraps her hands around her pigtails and pulls, straining to hear something besides the voices echoing in the tiny office.

She begs him to make it stop, he must know, he knows madness intimately, he has to know.  There must be something he can do to stop this.

Completely disregarding the fact that they were inside, he takes a drag of his cigarette and stares at her sadly.  With a twist of the screw in his skull, he shakes his head.

-

She is brushing her teeth.  It feels perfunctory, tedious.  Everything seems like she’s swimming through molasses these days.  There is a heaviness in her chest that makes it hard to breathe.

Leaning over, she spits in the sink, then straightens.  Her reflection is not alone in the mirror.

Maka whirls around, wild-eyed and brandishing her toothbrush.  He isn’t behind her.  Of course he isn’t.  She looks back into the mirror, and she is alone once again.

With a minty roar, Maka slams her fist into the mirror, shattering the glass and ruining the door to the medicine cabinet.  She pulls her hand to her chest, nursing the cuts.   _Deep breath.  Deep breath_.  Now that the mirror is gone, she can see the gauze and medicinal tape inside.  One-handed, Maka pulls them out and begins to wrap her hand, expert fingers nimbly doing what she had done so many times, what he had done so many times.

Her eyes are drawn to the bottle of hair gel he left behind.  The whispering grows louder.

She stares at it for a moment, the buzzing in her ears like a thousand angry bees.  Then her wrapped hand shoots out and grasps it despite the gauze.  She drops it into the trash.  Feverishly, she grabs everything else that was his, toothbrush, shampoo, reams and reams of floss.  They fall into the wastepaper basket with a _shush_ every time they hit the plastic bag lining it.   _Shush.  Shush.  Shush._

-

No one has any idea what to do with her anymore.

Weapons and meisters have died before.  Warriors fell in the line of duty all the time, and weapons had been ripped from their meisters’ grips like that a hundred times over.  Resonances had been cut short, snuffed out like a candle, cord severed without warning.  But no weapon and meister had been resonating with Black Blood coursing through their veins, bound more closely than any other partnership, only to be torn asunder.

The Black Room.  The crimson and ebony checkered tiles stretched before them.  The piano.  The blue candles.

Nothing could have prepared her.

They had been dancing, swaying gently together, staring into each other’s eyes.  The clacking of her heels on the smooth tiles and the light swishing of her dress could be heard just over the low sounds of the gramaphone.  They were perfectly in sync.

They were winning on the outside.

But without warning, the witch was everywhere, and she couldn’t hear properly, and her reflexes–

And her scythe was up between her and the–

And there was blood–

And there was screaming–

And in the Black Room he had frozen in midstep, eyes glassy.  The room seemed to dissolve, melt away like the wax of a candle, running down into the inky blackness.  His body seemed to shift, and a crack split him from hip to shoulder, and he disintegrated–

And she was screaming, and she was outside again, and he was gone there too–

No one has any idea what to do with her anymore.

When they see her at all, they are uncomfortable, hesitant, awkward.  There are low whispers behind her back, and for a moment, they sound too much like the whispers that haunt her dreams, and she whips her head around.

Her friends ask her if she’s seen a ghost, but she doesn’t respond; it’s a foolish question.  She is a ghost, she was in his head when he was ripped away; she already knows what it’s like to die.

-

She packs all his clothes away for the winter, but instead of storing them like he used to, she brings them to the second hand store.

There is bag after bag, stuffed to the brim with shirts and shoes and pants and jackets.  Maka throws them unceremoniously into the trunk of her car; if she gets too close, she can smell him on them.

The owner of the second hand shop nods gently when she tells him that she wants to donate everything.  He has worked in Death City for years and years; he has seen this many times before.  He and his assistant help Maka unload the numerous bags and line them up on the curb outside the store, one after the other, their innards containing everything from his closet.  The look almost like they’ve been eviscerated.  Maka looks away.

The manager tries to offer her the consignment value of everything.  She shakes him off.

The return trip to the apartment feels lighter, the back of her car is no longer weighed down by all the bags, and she hasn’t seen a flash of white out of the corner of her eyes in hours.  Maka enters the apartment and closes her eyes to listen.

She can hear the breeze through the open window, and floating on it, the sound of the voices.  But they are softer, weaker.

-

The voices circle around her head like vultures, and she is the lioness, protecting her kill.  Every time they flit into her skull, she tosses the thing in her hand: his old DS, the remote they fought over so often, a stray sock that found its way under her bed.  Sirens blast in her head until she gets rid of them, a balm until next time.

Some of the things she throws into the garbage.  Others she donates to charity.  A few she thrusts into her surprised friends’ hands, insisting that they do something with it, “ _just put it away, just lock it away, just get it away_ –”

She yearns for the quiet, the emptiness, the peace she has not known since it happened, and she grows more feverish with every flare up, every shadowy figure she sees out of the corner of her eye, every gentle murmur in her ear.  Like a bloodhound on the trail, she finds the offending object and purges it.

Finally, finally, she thinks she is all done, that everything is gone, but there is still one single whisper, a solitary voice, an echo of an echo.  She tears through the house, the noise of shredding paper and overturned tables somehow quieter than the thin voice in her ears.  It whispers sweet nothings while she frantically searches, and she finds herself in her own room, tearing through her bookshelves.  She cracks open her favorite so hard that she breaks the spine and finds a single photograph of the two of them, arms around each other’s shoulders and smiling at the camera.  She stares at the glossy memory, the voice in her ear an insistent sound, until there are wet splotches on the laminated surface.  The voice grows louder, more grating, and she clenches her eyes closed.  A dull roar, slamming around and around in her skull, and then there is a lighter in her hand.  The cacophony intensifies as she holds it up to the corner of the picture and flicks it with her thumb.

A spark.  It lights.  The edges begin to brown and curl, distorting the colors as the flame spreads across the photograph, and the last reminder of Soul goes up in smoke.

It’s finally quiet in her apartment.

 

* * *

 

**Day 4: Dragons**

“All right, it’s Maka’s turn,” said Kid, gesturing vaguely while examining his notes.

“Excellent,” she said, taking a swig of her beer and looking at her own character sheets.  They were covered in notes and diagrams, and she flipped through them briefly before continuing.  “Okay, my character is very hot-headed and very ready to be done with this quest, she’s gonna attack the Bridge Troll.”

“Not so fast,” said Soul, slamming his palm on this table.  Patty and Tsubaki stopped chatting, turning to watch the action, and Liz, who was returning arms laden with snacks, raised her eyebrows at Soul.  Black*Star sat up straighter.  “We have been through too much for you to charge in headlong at the Bridge Troll.”

“He’s got a point,” said Tsubaki.  “Black*Star blew that hole in the Arattian Castle and we barely made it out of there alive.”

“But it was super cool,” Black*Star boasted, throwing his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair.

Maka rolled her eyes.  “We were fine.  And besides, when we moved too slowly through the Fiddlehead Swamps, we lost half our supplies!  We can’t risk losing any more, we need to attack the Bridge Troll right now.”

“I really think that’s a bad idea.”  Soul crossed his arms over his chest.

“Well, Marixia disagrees.”  Maka reached out and grabbed one of the dice off the table and turned to Kid.  “I’m gonna–”

“No!” Soul yelled, waving his papers in front of her face.  “I’ve been keeping track of everyone’s stats, and we’ll never survive a head on battle!”

Maka whirled on him.  “Solomon isn’t the leader of this group.”

“Yeah, Barnabas is!” shouted Black*Star, though no one was really paying attention.  Their eyes were on the meister and weapon glaring daggers at each other across the small card table set up in a spare room of the Gallows Manor.  Liz surreptitiously slid her beer off the table and out of the line of fire.

“Marixia shoves Solomon,” she said suddenly.  Kid stared blankly up at her.  “She shoves him, hard, to get him to go along with her plan.”

Maka dropped the die that was still in her hand on the table, where it clattered around for a bit before displaying a 1 to the crowd of players.

“Uh,” said Kid, now looking through his notes more frantically.  “I suppose… that means that you just kind of… caress his chest gently.”

“What?!” Maka cried, face heating up in a way that had nothing to do with the alcohol she’d had.  “Kid, no.”

He pointed at the die with the eraser end of his pencil.  “You rolled it, not me.”

She scooped it up again, looking murderous.  “I take another turn–”

“What!” protested Black*Star.

“–to punch Solomon in the gut.”  She threw the die a little harder than necessary against the table, and it bounced off and fell to the floor.  Patty leaned over in her chair to scoop it back up and hand it over to Maka.  This time, she let it fall out of her hand.  It landed on another 1.

“Looks like you just poke his stomach.”

“This is ridiculous,” she growled, absolutely refusing to meet her weapon’s gaze.

Soul rubbed the back of his neck.  “Uh, Soloman tries to push Marixia away by shoving her shoulder.”

He rolled the die in his hand, and another 1 lay facing up.

“Looks like you gently rub her shoulder,” said Kid, stony-faced.  “It seems likely, as Marixia has wild curly hair, that your hand gets stuck.”

“What?” demanded Maka.

“I’m the DM, not you,” Kid said, shooting her a look.

“Then Marixia starts a fight with Soloman.”

Another 1.

“You two are just dancing together.”  Kid lay his leaflet of notes on the table.  “And you’re going to keep dancing until I say so.  No buts!” he said as he held up a hand to cut off Maka’s protests.  “You’re not allowed to monopolize our time anymore.  I will, however, consider lightening your sentence _if_ –” and here he pointed between the two of them “–you both start actually dancing with each other and let us approach this Bridge Troll in peace.”

Soul didn’t dare make eye contact with his seething meister at the moment, but a thin hand was suddenly shoved in front of his face and he took it instinctively.  He stood and allowed himself to be lead to the corner of the room.  Maka’s face was bright red as she clamped his hand to her waist and gripped his shoulder in an ironclad hold, but he couldn’t tell if it was because she had had two beers or because they were being actively humiliated.

They began to sway.  The voices at the table began up again as Black*Star tried to propose throwing a grenade at the Bridge Troll (“for the last time Black*Star,  _there are no grenades in Dungeons and Dragons_ ”) while they danced together in the corner.

“My plan would have worked,” she said mutinously, and Soul jerked his head back.

“No, it wouldn’t have.”

She shot him a disgusted look.

“Seriously, you are always rushing into things and getting in over your head.”

“My character is powerful enough that I can handle almost anything Kid throws at us.”

Soul shook his head.  “You’re strong, but the monsters we’re facing are stronger than ever;we’re not in Ken’Suz anymore.  Kid is making it harder and harder and you’re gonna get killed.”

“Well you can always just heal me,” she insisted, but looked a little abashed.

“My healing only works when our characters are in sync,” Soul chided gently.

They danced together silently for a time, both lost in thought.  He could feel the heat of her skin through her shirt and the light feathery breaths against his neck made goosebumps erupt across his arms.

“I guess we need to be a team to be the most effective,” Maka said, looking up at Soul with a smile.  His heart did a backflip.

“Are you listening?” Kid’s voice cut in with a sudden jolt.

“Yes?” Maka asked.

“I said you can come back to the table,” Kid said, amusement evident in his voice.  Black*Star and Patty had identical wicked grins while Liz was sniggering behind her hand.  Tsubaki was biting her nails, but it was a poor ruse to pretend she wasn’t laughing.

“Finally,” said Maka, disentangling herself from Soul and striding back to the table.

“I mean I said it twenty minutes ago, but now is fine too,” said Kid, a wide smirk on his lips.

 

* * *

**Day 5: Night Swimming/Skinny Dipping  
**

It’s a gross motel pool and the chlorinated water tastes harsh in his mouth and he’s more than a little tipsy, but he has a half-naked meister in his lap, so Soul’s not complaining.

Her bathing suit top is somewhere– over there.  She flung it in the general direction of the ladder, but her aim was off and it definitely landed in the bushes.  She doesn’t seem to mind.

Her tongue tastes like champagne and chlorine.  She sits astride his lap underwater, holding the bottle above his head as she kisses him.

They are celebrating– something.  What– it was a witch council.  They are celebrating the end of the witch council.  It was being held in the middle of nowhere Arkansas.  Witches, as they well knew from hunting them for years, tended to prefer quieter, more out of the way places.  Their magic was less likely to be detected if they were far away from nosy humans, and when they gathered together they grew even more cautious.  So the Last Death Scythe and his meister had traveled all the way to a tiny rundown motel in the Arkansas woods, and tomorrow they would finally be able to sleep in a bed that didn’t smell of mothballs and cigarette smoke.  So they were celebrating.

The champagne tastes oily; it had not been expensive.  But her tongue is worth it, and he moves his hands up her bare back to slide them across her shoulderblades.  He can feel the well-defined muscles jumping under his cold, wet touch, and he knows she is coiled and thrumming with unreleased tension.  A week of meetings and diplomacy has her well trained body ready for action, and seeing as how there were no rogue witches or prekishin to track down, she has made _him_ her mission.

She pulls back to take another draught from the bottle, then returns her lips to his.  He feels a heady rush, an overwhelming desire for the woman in his lap.

There is a rustling and a creaking, and it’s clear that the other patrons of the motel are milling around the front.  Maka comes up for air and glances over her shoulder.  She doesn’t look too concerned, only miffed at the interruption, but when she turns back, her grin is wide and cat-like.

“Let’s continue this upstairs,” she whispers, and Soul nods fervently.

 

* * *

**Day 6: Worth It**

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Maka cried indignantly.

Her weapon partner had never look more ashamed.  He reached out slowly, but she jerked away.  “Maka,” he said, voice tight.  “It was so tempting…”

She rubbed her temples.  “Soul.  You cannot expect me to be okay with this.”

“Maka, I just couldn’t resist–”

“ _You couldn’t resist eating 48 pizza rolls?_ ”

“48?” demanded Kilik from somewhere behind the couch.  “You weakass punk, you didn’t even hit 50.”

“Shut up,” moaned Soul, waving his hand in the air in his general direction.

“You’re both nothing compared to me,” Black*Star said, though his voice was hard to hear over the echoes against the toilet bowl.  “I ate 73.”

“And that’s why you’re vomiting it all into my toilet,” snapped Maka.  “This was, by far, one of the stupidest ideas you’ve ever had.”

She felt something wrap around her ankle and tug at her sock.  Looking down, she saw Soul gazing up at her imploringly.  “But imagine.  We could have eaten 1000 pizza rolls.  1000, Maka.  That would have been so _cool_.”

Maka rolled her eyes and stepped out of his grip.  Harvar was lying in the doorway of the kitchen in a food coma, so she picked her way over him and found Kid sitting at the table.  He was glaring at a plate full of pizza rolls.  “How… are you doing?” she asked, noticing that his normal pallor had gone a bit green.

“Shinigami are not able to be poisoned,” he said.  With a grimace, he stifled a burp.  “Though… I may have just found the exception.”

“How many did you eat?”

“287.”

“You’re a champion,” said Ox from under the table, and Maka jumped; she hadn’t seen him there.

Maka grabbed the plate full of pizza rolls and walked back into the living room.  Black*Star was throwing up again in the bathroom down the hall, and Kilik had managed to crawl out from behind the couch.  Soul was still lying where she had left him.

She picked one up off the plate.  It had gone cold, though it was still greasy.  Soul wrinkled his nose at it as she held it above him.

“I never wanna eat another one of those again,” he said.

Maka opened her fingers and let it drop onto his face.

He flinched as it bounced off his nose.  “What the hell,” Soul said.

She dropped another one.

“No,” he groaned, turning his head to the side.

“If you’re really that sick that you won’t even get out of the way, I think you deserve this,  
she said, amusement evident in her voice.

“Probably, but this is still pretty uncool.”

Maka dropped another one.

Soul let out a long low moan that made Maka chuckle.  She kept it up as the sun set gently in the background and Black*Star threw up again.

 

* * *

**Day 7: Coming of Age  
**

He’d never thought he’d make it this far.

A masters in music had been something his brother was always destined for, something Wes had been studying in pursuit of for years, something Wes would tack behind his name to solidify his standing as an expert.  But he had always known he’d never get one, never be understood enough by the professors to be awarded the diploma.

Until Maka.

There wasn’t a program in Death City for masters in any sort of music program, so she petitioned Kid for a two year assignment to Los Angeles.  They worked out of a small apartment while Maka recruited students for the DWMA among the Los Angeles youth and Soul studied.  On the nights he wanted to give up, to throw his materials out the window and never hear another note of music again, she would rub his shoulders and whisper in his ear and tell him he could do it.  On the nights when he finished his projects, she would slip into a slinky skirt and high heels and grab him by the hand and celebrate on the town.

Now he was wearing his cap and gown and he was approaching the podium where the dean would shake his hand.

Normally he might not be interested in a graduation ceremony – all pomp and circumstance, no fun or substance – but Maka had insisted.  Despite the bright lights on him, Soul could see out into the audience and spotted her immediately, seated next to his mother and waving up at him.

As he reached for the dean’s wrinkled hand, Soul felt a smile spread across his lips unbidden, and the texture of the smooth expensive paper that was his diploma sent an electric tingle up his arm.  He turned to face the woman with a camera snapping each graduate’s picture and felt proud, really proud, of what he had accomplished.

 


End file.
